Little Cold War
The Little Cold War also known as Cold War II, and the Second Cold War (approx. 2014–2023) was a state of ongoing tensions, hostilities, and political rivalry between the United States and the European Union against the Russian Federation. Unlike the First Cold War, this conflict was largely over regional security issues, rather than an overarching economic and ideological conflict. Russia created the Eurasian Economic Union with several other Central Asian and Caucasian countries. The official start date of the Second Cold War is often debated, but most historians agree that it began in earnest in 2014 with the Annexation of Crimea. Much like the first Cold War, the second was ultimately about Russia's relationship with the rest of Europe, particularly with respect to its lack of natural borders in the East European Plain that had been exploited by every western invader since Napoleon. Unlike the previous Cold War, this conflict also took into account Russia's population crunch and European dependency on Russian oil and natural gas. Resources proved to be Russia's greatest advantage during the conflict, and under the leadership of Vladimir Putin the country was able to build up enough capital from the exportation of natural resources to develop the Union Military to be on par with that of the United States by the late 2010s. The Russian dominance over European Energy also proved to be effective at intimidating most of Western Europe and therefore NATO from engaging with the conflict, resulting in the start of the organizations decline. Only the Eastern European NATO countries remained involved in the conflict, under heavy support from the United States via technology transfer and military aid. Russia also used their energy dominance to keep the Ukraine in their sphere of influence, despite much of the country's opposition to Russian military intervention. Poland became the greatest ally of the United States during this period and grew to become one of the most powerful economies in Europe by its end. Second only to Poland were the Baltic States, which faced the largest concentration of Union Military forces on their border of any country. While Europe played the largest and most visible part of the Second Cold War, the Caucasus and the Middle East remained the most active area of proxy combat between the two sides. American sponsored Chechnyan and Georgian insurgents and Russian sponsored governments in Pakistan, Iraq, and Syria, led to a number of small conflicts in those regions. This conflict also forced the US to re-evaluate its relationship with the Middle East; an area that had seen decades of military intervention by the United States. The most radical shift in US Policy in this region was with Iran, whose alliance, formed after years of negotiations and the war with the Islamic State enabled the US to withdraw all combat troops in Afghanistan and Iraq (save for Balad Air Base) creating a new balance of power. Israel remained an ally of the United States but was officially neutral. The conflict ultimately ended once the US began to focus on de-emphasizing hydrocarbons to weaken Russia’s influence in Europe, and ultimately remove the country's economic linchpin. With an exceedingly useless hydrocarbon industry and burdened by military expenditures, Russia began to fall behind the US technologically and soon faced economic collapse in the early 2020s. With a stagnant economy, growing demographic concerns, and government bankruptcy brought on by years of conflict against Chechnya and a badly overextended military, the Russian Federation formally collapsed on May 14, 2023, resulting in the formal end of the Little Cold War and Russia itself. Beginnings of the Little Cold War (2008–2014) Crisis and escalation (2014–2020) 'Ukraine' 'Attempted Interference in the 2016 US Presidential Election' During the height of the 2016 US Presidential Election, a collection of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails were leaked and subsequently published by the website WikiLeaks in July 2016. The collection included 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments from the DNC, the governing body of the United States' Democratic Party. Although Wikileaks did not reveal its source, cybersecurity firms and American intelligence officials stated with "high confidence" that Russian intelligence services were responsible. Most likely believed by many as an attempt to get the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump elected to the presidency. During the final weeks of the Election, U.S. intelligence officials warned privately that a campaign they believed was backed by the Russian government to undermine the credibility of the U.S. presidential election, could move beyond the hacking of Democratic Party email systems. Additional efforts by the Russian Government would include posting fictional evidence of voter fraud or other disinformation in the run-up to voting on November 8 2016. This scenario became apparent when news outlets such as Reuters began reporting that both the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies were examining faked documents aimed at discrediting Hillary Clinton's campaign; as part of a broader investigation into what they believed was an attempt by Russia to disrupt the election. After Trump's victory in the 2016 election, the US and Russian attempted to forge peaceful ties and coordinate against ISIS in Syria, including withdrawing support to rebel groups who opposed the Russian-backed Assad regime. However, opposition from Congress and within the White House forced the Trump administration to walk back their commitments to Russia, including the US re-affirming the United States' continued commitment to NATO, supporting the Three Seas Initiative, and culminating in the US Congress passing new sanctions against Russia despite presidential opposition. The new sanctions were a potential foreign policy disaster for Russia, as they proved that the Americans could not be coerced into a new relationship and placed serious limitations on Russian oil and gas exports. Russia began cutting ties with the Trump administration after this point, and actively supported anti-American groups along their periphery, including North Korea. In 2018, President Trump refused to implement Congressional mandated sanctions. New Space Race On the space warfare front, the United States and Russia pursued the development of long-range weapons with which they could strike the territory of the other, and anti-satellite weapons do disable each other's satellite networks. In November 2015, the Russians successfully launched the world's first anti-satellite, and announced a planned Mars manned flyby by 2025. In 2017 the United States began a major buildup of its launch capabilities and satellite defense network and announced a plan to put a human on the surface of Mars in a decade. That same year the US tested a hyper-sonic glide weapon, signaling start of the hypersonic arms race. 'Asia-Pacific' 'Korean Crisis' Tensions along the Korean peninsula flared between 2017–2018, when North Korea successfully tested several missiles with the capability to reach the United States. President Donald Trump and Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un escalated the situation with threats of war. Following the passage of several UN resolutions which called for tighter sanctions on North Korea, Kim Jong-in announced his willingness to restore the Seoul–Pyongyang hotline and agreed to talks with South Korea about North Korean participation in the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. Following several diplomatic meetings between North Korean, South Korean, and American officials, nuclear and ballistic missile tests in North Korea were halted. The meeting between Chairman Kim Jong-un and President Moon Jae-in in April 2018 resulted in the Panmunjon Declaration. President Trump and Chairman Kim met in Singapore on June 12, 2018, resulting in a joint declaratoion of “full denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Final years (2020–2023) End of the Little Cold War By the Late 2010s Recession Russia had already faced a severe economic downturn, less the result of American sanctions, and more to do with the decline in oil prices from 2014 to 2015, due in part to the US Shale Boom. The recession exacerbated the fall in oil prices as global consumption of hydrocarbons plummeted even further; combined with the drop in export commodities prices, Russia's economic contraction turned into an outright collapse. With a growing opposition movement in the 2020 Russian elections, President Putin clamped down on civil liberties and seized direct control of much of the Russian economy in an attempt to strength consumer confidence. Upon the election of Cory Booker to the presidency, the US further escalated the Little Cold War, accelerating a reversal from the Russian reset policy which began in 2008 after the election of Barack Obama. Booker continued the massive buildup of the United States Armed Forces begun under Trump, and implemented new policies towards Russia and the Eurasian Union. In response to Russian deployment of the hypersonic Zircon missile, Booker oversaw NATO and the Visegrad Group's deployment of the "Laser Triad" to Poland, Hungary, and Romania. He also added more US sanctions on Russia. Russia's economy had significantly declined in previous years due to crippling sanctions from the US and EU and the decline in demand for commodities that made up the bulk of Russia's export driven economy during the Late 2010s Recession. The surge in US military presence on their western border overextended Russia militarily while the Booker administration funded a covert war in the Caucasus through Turkey and Azerbaijan. The Russian public was staging regular demonstrations against the Kremlin and military defections began to accelerate by late 2022. In 2023, following a series of riots and a military coup, the Russian government collapsed, ending the Little Cold War. Category:21st-century conflicts